Had I stuck with my original plan, I would have run/hiked up Boulder's 8,461-foot Bear Peak with renowned uphill runner Scott Elliott on Feb. 23, a balmy, sunny day with a 62-degree high.

But no. I was busy. I didn't feel 100 percent. Let's reschedule.

Elliott, a soft-spoken, easygoing guy, said no problem. How about Wednesday, Feb. 28? Heck yeah. Let's do it. It would be Ascent 59 of Elliott's attempt.

Do it, we did. In a snowstorm. Through an 8-inch blanket of white stuff, which sneakily disguised ice and 6- to 10-foot, posthole-pocked drifts on the north ridge and resulted in many a slip, slide and tumble, mostly for me, but also for Elliott after he kindly loaned me his nifty Kahtoola running crampons for much of the descent. Lots and lots of hand flapping to keep gloves free of snow. We looked like birds in the fog up there.

And if anything, the recent warmer weather made conditions more hazardous, as meltoff and refreezing turned parts of Fern Canyon into a virtual bobsled run.

The journey took us 2:40, only because Elliott was taking an "easy" day, on account of the ragtag journalist following his tracks up the mountain. For comparison, his fastest round-trip so far is 50 minutes up and 35 down — an hour and 25 minutes.

It was a blast. But to do it 100 days running....

"I just wanted to have a really good head start on my uphill running racing season," says Elliott, 42, a former University of Colorado cross-country runner and eight-time winner of the grueling Pikes Peak Ascent.

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"What I've been known for is slacking off (in winter), then cramming."

Elliott started his attempt on Jan. 1 with his partner, Rachel Hardies, and their 3-month old son, C.J. He chose Bear Peak because the Shanahan trailhead is just a short trot from his front door. He planned to make the trip (it's misleading to call it running; conditions mandate power-hiking through snow and ice in many places) 100 days in a row, but a sleepless night working forced him to put off one expedition and make it up with two trips the next day.

"(The weather has) added to the training because it's much harder work," he says. "On days when there's a storm or one has just finished ... I've had to plow through some big-ass drifts. It's yet another type of workout, bashing your upper legs to plow through."

Fellow mountain runner Matt Carpenter of Manitou Springs, holder of course records for the Pikes Peak Ascent and Marathon and the Leadville Trail 100, isn't surprised that Elliott would attempt such a feat.

"Scott is a great competitor, very dedicated," Carpenter says. "Especially in winter, it's hard to get outdoors. You've got to have something to keep you going."

Dedicated? Yeah. On his toughest day to date, Elliott says the ascent alone took him almost three hours.

"In certain places the drifts were pretty much up to my chest and the wind was close to 100 mph. I knew as long as I kept going, I'd be OK. But there were several points I was tempted to say, 'This is too much. It's nice to have a streak or a goal, but this is nasty,'" he says.

Given the challenging weather, Elliott hasn't seen many others on his 67 ascents so far. But he did run into another hardy soul in mid-January: Lafayette's Kevin Nicol, a Cat 1 bicycle racer.

"The weather was pretty nasty. I was coming down and he was still on his way up. I was sort of surprised to see somebody, so I made a decision to wait for him at the saddle, chat him up and see what he's all about," Elliott says.

Elliott learned that Nicol was training for his upcoming season. The weather had kept him off the bike, so he'd been busting up Bear Peak almost every day since November. Since then, the pair have run the mountain together about 20 times.

"He's been very motivating on certain days to get me out, and hopefully I've helped him. He's definitely in gear for a good season. He talked about how strong he's feeling already," Elliott says.

Nicol, 39, says the relationship has benefitted both athletes.

"He has pushed me harder than I dare go this time of year in my sport," he says. On the lower, more level parts of the trip, running with Elliott is like "keeping up with a gazelle and I have to hang on for dear life. But above that it sort of taps into my abilities, too, and we sort of switch off."

Nicol also became a believer in Kahtoola crampons after trying Elliott's.

"It' like having 50 more watts," says Nicol, who rides for the Tokyo Joe's cycling team. During one run, the two lightly-geared runners were bemused to pass a fully-outfitted mountaineering team slogging toward the summit.

"We thought maybe they were practicing for Mount McKinley, or something," Elliott says.

Elliott is humble about his attempt, noting that Colorado is full of athletes who do difficult, truly harrowing things all the time.

He mentions Snowmass' Chris Davenport, who in January attained his goal of becoming the first person to ski down all the state's 14,000-foot peaks from absolute summit in a year. He also cites his friend Danelle Ballengee of Dillon, a world-champion adventure racer who tumbled off a trail near Moab, Utah in December. She broke her pelvis and back and spent two nights in frigid temperatures in skimpy running clothes before her dog Taz helped rescuers find her.

"What I'm doing is tame," Elliott says.

Still, he hopes feats like his can motivate other athletes of all abilities.

"Maybe some coach of a high-school team will put this story up on a locker and say, 'This guy is going out and getting it done.' ... Or maybe someone on the edge of getting outside and doing some kind of workout for their health or well-being will take some energy from this," he says.

Elliott, who also won the Empire State Building Run Up earlier in his career, now hopes to move into coaching, to help others reach their goals.

"That's something I'm intending to switch over to," says the part-time stay-at-home father and owner of Macintosh Solutions. "I would love to be able to offer advice and training tips if people want to have me give them routine coaching."

Contact Clay Evans at (303) 473-1352 or evansc@dailycamera.com

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Are you the guys that watched me ski from the summit on Feb. 2? Where are those pictures?

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